WoW: What To Do When You Have Been Hacked

It has come to my attention that recently my guildmaster over on the EU server has been hacked and also happened to my last guildmaster too until we disbanded the guild this time last year, and so Iâ€™m going to give a step by step on how to secure yourself from future hacks and also how to get it back.

There is no guarantee that you will get all your stuff back, but from people I have spoken to(friends, guildies etc) they have had their stuff back

Clean your PC

The first thing you should do when youâ€™ve become a victim is to simply scan your computer for viruses and any malicious or rogue software, the reason why you should do this before calling Blizzard support is that once youâ€™ve received your new password from Blizzard you have a better chance of not being hacked as soon as you use that new password. I will give a list of recommended anti-viruses at the bottom of this article(And no I will not recommend Norton if you want to know the reasons, do some research and you will see why.)

If you do find any viruses on your PC and the anti virus cleans them up and youâ€™ve checked there are no spyware then proceed to the next step, if however the anti virus canâ€™t remove any viruses then you will want to reinstall your copy of Windows(this is usually the best option for those who are paranoid)

Retrieve your password

Once youâ€™ve made sure there are no viruses/spyware/malicious or rogue software left on your computer you can go through the password retrieval process(or change the password yourself if you still have access to the account) the links to go to are as follows EU and US

Contact Blizzard

If you didnâ€™t email them during the password retrieval you can contact a Game Master by Opening a Ticket either on the battle.net website or ingame, in your ticket tell them your account has been compromised and your equipment/gold/cookies etc have been taken. Once you have done this you will need to keep an eye out for emails or ingame mail as they will then guide you on getting your stuff back.

Temporary Ban

During this process your account will be temporarily disabled, this is standard procedure which Blizzard takes in order to make sure they arenâ€™t being contacted by hackers, whilst your account is disabled Blizzard will ask you to confirm certain confidential details which will be kept confidential.

Restoration

Once youâ€™ve gone through the required details with Blizzard your account will be re-enabled and the restoring process will begin, it should take between 3-10 days depending on how busy the Account Administrations department are.

Now itâ€™s time to make sure this never happens again.

Preventing another hack

Normally accounts are hacked by either sharing account information, entering account details on phishing websites(these are normally emails making you scared that youâ€™ve done something wrong, remember Blizzard will NEVER ask for your username/password via email, ingame mail or ingame whispsers. These are scams. Another way is via keylogging, these are usually hidden within viruses or have infected various legit websites. It basically logs your keystrokes.

You can prevent these sort of hacks by getting yourself a Blizzard Authenticator which binds to your Battle.net account, whenever you login it will ask you for a random digital code which will be found on the authenticator that changes over time. You can set it so that when a new computer logs into your account that it will ask for the digital code preventing anyone outside of your home from accessing your account.